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A preliminary observation: in looking for excellence in this
thing of mixture, the Kosmos, we cannot require all that is
implied in the excellence of the unmingled; it is folly to ask
for Firsts in the Secondary, and since this Universe contains
body, we must allow for some bodily influence upon the total and
be thankful if the mingled existent lack nothing of what its
nature allowed it to receive from the Divine Reason.
Thus, supposing we were enquiring for the finest type of the
human being as known here, we would certainly not demand that he
prove identical with Man as in the Divine Intellect; we would
think it enough in the Creator to have so brought this thing of
flesh and nerve and bone under Reason as to give grace to these
corporeal elements and to have made it possible for Reason to
have contact with Matter.
Our progress towards the object of our investigation must begin
from this principle of gradation which will open to us the wonder
of the Providence and of the power by which our universe holds
its being.
We begin with evil acts entirely dependent upon the Souls which
perpetrate them- the harm, for example, which perverted Souls do
to the good and to each other. Unless the foreplanning power
alone is to be charged with the vice in such Souls, we have no
ground of accusation, no claim to redress: the blame lies on the
Soul exercising its choice. Even a Soul, we have seen, must have
its individual movement; it is not abstract Spirit; the first
step towards animal life has been taken and the conduct will
naturally be in keeping with that character.
It is not because the world existed that Souls are here: before
the world was, they had it in them to be of the world, to concern
themselves with it, to presuppose it, to administer it: it was in
their nature to produce it- by whatever method, whether by giving
forth some emanation while they themselves remained above, or by
an actual descent, or in both ways together, some presiding from
above, others descending; some for we are not at the moment
concerned about the mode of creation but are simply urging that,
however the world was produced, no blame falls on Providence for
what exists within it.
There remains the other phase of the question- the distribution
of evil to the opposite classes of men: the good go bare while
the wicked are rich: all that human need demands, the least
deserving have in abundance; it is they that rule; peoples and
states are at their disposal. Would not all this imply that the
divine power does not reach to earth?
That it does is sufficiently established by the fact that Reason
rules in the lower things: animals and plants have their share in
Reason, Soul and Life.
Perhaps, then, it reaches to earth but is not master over all?
We answer that the universe is one living organism: as well
maintain that while human head and face are the work of nature
and of the ruling reason-principle, the rest of the frame is due
to other agencies- accident or sheer necessity- and owes its
inferiority to this origin, or to the incompetence of unaided
Nature. And even granting that those less noble members are not
in themselves admirable it would still be neither pious nor even
reverent to censure the entire structure.
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